Here’s a trick that works to de-Ruth someone you see as Ruthed.  It seems idiotic, but it works - and hey - this is Second Life, so it is apropo.  Change groups, from one to other.  Then wait a few moments, and that should do it.  Unless it’s a really laggy sim, then it might take a bit longer.  That’s all.  Go figure.  I forgot who gave me this tip.

-Veyron

One feature that I miss from older clients was clicking on objects in your inventory would cause you to wear them.  Apparently, this functionality was disabled because people were wearing their houses.  Now, double clicking on object brings up a mostly useless information window.  This is annoying.  Wearing lots of prims, like I usually do, is a pain.  So, I now load them into folders and then wear all to change outfits, but I still would like the old feature back.

Jira has a patch proposed by Nicholaz Beresford that has, of course, languished in Jira since July of last year.  If you want that feature back, go and vote on it.

-Veyron

The new client has a bug in it…. It can cause HUDs to malfunction or disappear. It’s hit me several times. The solution is to remove the HUD and reattach it.

Log into Second Life Jira and vote for them to fix it. It is bug VWR-1448. Thanks to the Huddles Blog for pointing out the problem. I was wondering what was going on.

-Veyron

Color is a funny thing in Real Life. Light perception in a human is the reflection of ambient light off of the object we are looking at. This light we see is “based” on the source light, the Sun, the light in your room, a flashlight, the Moon, etc. Now, here’s where the interesting thing comes in. All of these light sources have a different light spectrum or color temperature.

I do photography in Real Life, and I take care to get my colors right. This is not an easy task. One key it to calibrate your monitor. All displays will have slight color variations. That Adobe Gamma program some of you see, is worthless, by the way…. You do this with a colorimeter, which is kind of a video camera you temporarily attach to the monitor that the computer can read back and see what color is really on the display.

When I take a picture with my digital SLR, the camera tries to guess what the ambient color temperature currently is when the shot is taken. It stores that information in the picture for later processing. I take pictures in what is known as a RAW image format, which is a lossless compress sensor dump. It’s not even really a picture at that point. It has to be made into a picture on a computer. This is another interesting point. Digital cameras do not take color pictures. Each photocell sees only intensities of grey, but color filters are put in front of cells for red, blue and green and then these combinations of colors are mixed together to make a color pictures. Oddly, there are more green photocells than the other colors, because human eyes are more sensitive to shades of green (probably to see ripe fruits).

Now here’s where it gets strange. When I “develop” the digital RAW image at home, I decide what color is what. I start with the suggestion of the color temperature from what the camera thought it was when the picture was taken, but then I can adjust it from there. Usually I calibrate from a grey color - looking for it in the shot. Select it and set that as my baseline color. And all is well. Printers need to do the same thing to get the colors corrected as well.

Now here’s where it gets really weird. This complicated process of getting the colors “right” is being done by your brain in real-time - all the time. Your brain knows what color things should be and automatically color corrects - instantly. A blue shirt outside in the Sun is not truly the same color under fluorescent lights inside. But, your eyes and brain see it as the same color. Just like magic. Your brain is a very powerful image processor, but you can fool it, for example, under a black light, things look all wrong because your eyes and brain are not used to seeing things under that color spectrum and have no point of reference to work with.

What does this have to do with Second Life? The new WindLight add on for the new skies is changing the lighting in world. People can change the lighting themselves and they change the colors of pretty much everything. Your brain is not compensating for this because it is probably not real enough, and the Real World is in your peripheral vision - locking in your brains color correction. The Herald has a post about this problem.

The funny part is, it’s not really a problem. Life is like that. Photographers get up before dawn to get out at dawn to get landscape shots. Why? The light is different because the Sunlight must travel through more atmosphere (the angle of the Sun) and has a more golden color. All of the colors in the world look more lush and have more “pop” to them. This does not last long. About an hour at most.

Photographers do not like taking shots around noon, because the light can be harsh and ugly. It is called high noon and good photographers try to avoid taking pictures then.

The bad part is, people in Second Life may not be getting a consistent view of the Second Life world because they are twittling with the settings. So everyone is seeing different things. This is fine if your tweaking colors to get a cool in world photo, but not so cool if your trying to sell a product and get a nice pastel color not look like neon. This is a sticky problem I’m not sure how they are not going to get around. Color is not a simple problem.

The previous client had a very primitive and simple color model. Now that it is getting more realistic, color is going to get complicated. I think the reason the Windlight enhanced viewer was pulled was they had not figured all this out yet. They - okay Torley - has been talking more about it recently, so I suspect they are going to be putting Windlight back into play again soon.

Should be interesting, and of course, controversial.

-Veyron

I’m having an annoying issue with screen captures - it might not necessarily be the Second Life client, but I’m not sure. I’ve opened a bug report with Linden Labs. Torley has been real helpful in trying to track it down. It seems to have started with the last 1.15 release maybe. I’m getting an ugly black band across the center of a high res screen capture. It makes a screen capture pretty much useless. I’m going to tinker around more with it to see if it might be anything with my system or the client.

Has anyone else seen this sort of thing before or currently? There are some JPEG2000 capture shots in the bug report. If you need a viewer for JPEG2000, try IrFanView - it’s free.

-Veyron

Linden Labs buys a company…. They buy Windward Mark and promise to improve visual quality within weeks. Hmmm…. Well, visual quality would be a nice thing. I’m less annoyed about this sort of activity rather than focusing in on stability. The photographers in Second Life should be happy.

But they do need to focus on stability, some of these bugs are pretty stupid….

Gotta catch a plane…

-Veyron

I hear now and then about people who have trouble with Second Life crashing their Windows PC from time to time. There are a few reasons why this might occur, but here’s one reason that you might not think of. Heat (or maybe power).

Okay, if you can run Second Life for about 5-15 minutes, and then it crashes, or your machine locks-up, heat or power is a likely candidate for the root of the problem. Now, the Second Life client has a lot of problems, but… here’s what is going on.

On a reasonably new computer while you are normally using it, it will idle down considerably. This draws less power. When you just have your normal windows display up, the 3D portion of your video card is probably turned off, and not drawing power. Your computer probably is drawing around 100 watts or less power while just surfing or playing around.

For example, an AMD X2 (Dual Processor) Athlon CPU draws about 30 watts of power when idling. When it ramps up to full speed it alone will draw up to 120 watts of power. This does not count the memory, support chips, the hard drives, etc.

A 7000 series Nvidia GPU can draw up to 150 watts of power when fully driven, sometimes more. Every watt of power consumed is turned into heat. Your power supply is also not 100% efficient, between 60 and 80% efficient. My PC at home when running Second Life probably draws close to 400 watts of power. This is a lot of heat for a home PC.

Most generic computers you buy off the shelf are not designed for 100% duty cycle for any extended period of time. Worse, as the high rises, electrical resistance rises, producing more heat.

This heat problem is going to manifest itself as being able to run for a while - the system is cool - and then crash after a while - it has over heated. Usually the video card over heats first. So, how do you fix this? Your number one problem is probably dust. Dust impairs the ability of the fans and heat sinks to remove heat. Open up your computer (after turning it off) and blow it out with air and clean it up good. Heat is also the number one killer of computers and hard disks. This is going to go a long way to solving problems. Get rid of the dust. If you smoke around the computer, that makes it worse.

Next, you can try to improve airflow into the computer. Do this intelligently. You want to blow cool air in and take hot air out. Usually, blow in from the front and out from the rear. You may also want to upgrade the CPU cooling unit on your computer. This can be somewhat difficult to do, depending on your computer design. You can find a lot of cooling fans and upgrades from companies like Newegg or Computergate. Buy ball bearing fans, avoid sleeve bearing fans.

Next problem might be an under powered power supply. It may be over taxed and the voltage might be sagging, causing a crash. If it looks cheap, it probably is. On most PCs, you can replace it with a bigger, unit. Newegg also sells power supplies. Look for high efficiency units. Do not buy a fan-less unit, as you are going to run it HOT. A good power supply is a good investment.

Lastly, you might look into upgrades. I’ll talk about that next post.

-Veyron

Thank God. Linen Labs is going to fix the so annoying “X has left the session” messages in groups, very soon now. On a positive note, I have noticed that teleports seem more relibable since the upgrade. Anyone else have the same experience with teleports?

-Veyron